The day before is accomplishment day

Before you start reading, open this page in another tab. You don’t have to look at it, but it has nice North African music to get you in the mood.

When I read the description on that menu page of a Moroccan woman crouching on a folded rug and cooking all her banquet on a charcoal brazier, I figured I’d be up to this dinner. After all, I have a stove, an oven, a refrigerator and I don’t have to crouch on a rug!

More luck– almost everything needs to be made the day ahead. That means that tomorrow will be almost all free to shine up the house and decorate the table.

I started this morning with thawing two packages of phyllo dough for the antipasto and the dessert. While that thawed I cooked dried fava beans to make one of the salads. Then I put two big aubergine/eggplants into the oven to roast.

While all those things were doing themselves, I whipped up a batch of chermoula. You know, I bought some of that in Rome once and I got a tiny jar for a lot of money, but I didn’t know what its name was so I had no alternative. This time I found out what it’s called and how to make it. The smell is terrific and it’s much less expensive! Thank goodness for being an expat and knowing that sisters just have to be doing it themselves. One of its ingredients is harissa. The harissa I bought some months back was so bitter I threw it away, so I looked that recipe up and made that, too. What a difference! This is fabulous stuff.

The two legs of lamb I bought were rubbed all over with this drippy spice mixture and refrigerated in a throwaway pan for 24 hours. Out of sight is out of mind… sort of. I searched on the internet for zataar, as required by the broad bean salad and found out it’s easier than brushing your teeth, so I made a double recipe. That, too, smells so great it’s hard not to wear it.

By 1 PM it was time to start rolling up the Spanikopita. I didn’t actually use one recipe but took part of this one and part of this one. I wanted to make the small triangular ones instead of a big casserole full. I was afraid to mix up the dessert and the antipasto if they looked alike. Could happen, you know. Anyway, my therapist was Greek and she told me that no Greek ladies do this on their own, but get a bunch of women together to assemble gazillions of them for everybody’s freezer. I see why. It took me so long that the butter kept solidifying and had to be reheated three times. At last they were all done and stacked in a throwaway pan with parchment between the layers. Then I licked butter off my fingers. Ahhhh.

Time to make the dessert! I started a sort of custard that will be the filling for Galaktoboureko, which is spelled at least six different ways. Oh well, it’s fattening anyway. You really only need one recipe and one spelling, because you’ll never eat it twice– although I certainly have with at least ten years between the pieces. I actually followed this recipe from RecipeZaar, but was confused in the middle of it whether it was British pints or US pints. Why? Because Americans almost never refer to pints, but cups instead. We’ll see tomorrow whether I used too much milk. Brushing on pounds of melted butter and stacking phyllo sheets was by then a habit, so this one went together easily. It went into the oven to bake while I made the syrup that will soak into it all night. I altered the syrup slightly by flavoring it with orange blossom water instead of lemon juice. It is in a bottle that looks really, really Arabic.